ybody had hidden themselves--had scampered off to
various hiding-places, Bob still stood in the middle of the
kitchen-floor, wondering where in the world he should go to! All of a
sudden--the girl in the corner had already reached sixty-four--he
thought he would go down in the cellar.
There was no rule against that--at least none that he knew of--and so,
slipping softly to the cellar-door, over in the darkest corner of the
kitchen, he opened it, and went softly down the steps.
There was a little light on the steps, for Bob did not shut the door
quite tightly after him, and if there had been none at all, he would
have been quite as well pleased. He was not afraid of the dark, and
all that now filled his mind was the thought of getting somewhere
where no one could possibly find him. So he groped his way under the
steps, and there he squatted down in the darkness, behind two barrels
which stood in a corner.
"Now," thought Bob, "she won't find me--easy."
He waited there a good while, and the longer he waited the prouder he
became.
"I'll bet mine's the hardest place of all," he said to himself.
[Illustration]
Bob heard a great deal of noise and shouting after the big girl came
out from her corner and began finding the others, and he also heard a
bang above his head, but he did not know that it was some one shutting
the cellar-door. After that all was quiet.
Bob listened, but could not hear a step. He had not the slightest
idea, of course, that they had stopped playing and were telling
stories by the kitchen fire. The big girl had found them all so easily
that Hide-and-Seek had been voted down.
Bob had his own ideas in regard to this silence. "I know," he
whispered to himself, "they're all found, and they're after me, and
keeping quiet to hear me breathe!"
And, to prevent their finding his hiding-place by the sound of his
breathing, Bob held his breath until he was red in the face. He had
heard often enough of that trick of keeping quiet and listening to
breathing. You couldn't catch him that way!
When he was at last obliged to take a breath, you might have supposed
he would have swallowed half the air in the cellar. He thought he had
never tasted anything so good as that long draught of fresh air.
"Can't hold my breath all the time!" Bob thought. "If I could, maybe
they'd never find me at all," which reflection was much nearer the
truth than the little fellow imagined.
I don't know how long Bob
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